Aftermath
by evil older sister
Summary: Okay this is likely the only one of it's kind but here it goes just a bit of an epilogue for one of the les visibly marked characters.


Clear blue eyes widened and cautiously took in scene; the triumphant song of the morning doves, the scent of the spring air, the glow of the morning sun warm and more beautiful than anything those eyes had seen. Involuntarily those same eyes closed with pure relief; she had escaped, she had survived. Shakily the woman moved away from the polished wood of the old door, off the porch of the deceptively innocent looking house. She forced herself to stop halfway down the walkway, ignorant of the neighbors that were starting to look out their windows completely horrified by her blood soaked clothing; she turned back to the house of her nightmares. The shaking in her limbs reached a fever pitch and tears pooled in her eyes. Mattie, Mark, and Angie; her best friends, her family and they were gone in a single night of horror. Their blood caked her skin and she wondered if anyone went into that house would they even find the bodies, would anyone ever see Mattie's torn skin. Would they try to untangle Angie's broken limbs or would they attribute some other reason to Mark's bloody hand prints on the door.

She sank to her knees, only distantly hearing the sirens in the distance overlapping with the screams from within her memory. Tears poured from eyes that frantically searched for the place where Angie had struck the outer wall with enough force to nearly liquefy her bones. Her despair deepened when she realized that outwardly there was no sign that they had ever been there. No visible way to tell that darkness lurked in that house. And Jeanette sobbed for her friends, for the other victims that had surrounded them and in the end helped her destroy the monster.

A cautious hand on her shoulder made her jump; she whirled around as best she could on her knees nearly toppling over in exhaustion at the movement. A uniformed officer stood with his hand still outstretched, coppery brown smudged along the fingers of his hand that had touched her. "Ma'am?" he asked calmingly, "are you alright?"

She stared up at him with uncomprehending eyes, is she alright? Hysterical laughter burbled at base of her throat. Is she alright? "I survived" laughter and tears cracked her voice, her breathing got shallow. "I survived" she whispered again grief warring with wonder, "How did I survive?" She asked the officer plaintively.

"Ma'am, I need you to come with me" even the officer was hesitant to reach out to her blood soaked form.

Jeanette merely turned back to the house with a strange quizzical look on her face, "They should have come out." She said.

"Ma'am…"

She shook her head, "Four went in so four should have come out, why didn't they leave?"

"Ma'am, were there other people with you? Do you know where they are?"

She looked back at the officer, her eyes now blank and her blood caked face now streaked with trails of drying tears, "the house ate them"

The officer blinked, "The house" he said slowly, "Ma'am, you need to come with me. We'll send in some people to find your friends, ok?" This time he steeled himself and reached down to lift her to her feet, like that was the signal his partner and several paramedics rushed forward the paramedics leading the girl away; she muttered about the house all the way out of ear shot. Officer Richard Craig shot a look at his partner Officer Jacob Cali, "You ready for this?"

Jacob shot him a look, "How bad could it be?"

"Well since this house apparently ate at least three people and out only witness is covered in blood I am not making any bets" Richard said dryly.

They entered the house cautiously, the entrance way was a dusty room with two doorways on either side of the room, a staircase leading up to the second floor and a closed door to the right of the staircase in the back of the room. "You sure this is where the girl came from?" Jacob asked. The dust looked undisturbed, though there was a trail of dried blood barely visible against the hardwood floor; Stranger still there was a patch of still wet blood on the inside handle of the front door.

"That's what the witness' said."

Jacob sighed "Room by room, then?"

Richard nodded, then considered "The blood seems be coming from the right, there first?"

The duo walked cautiously into the creaking house, through one of the open doorways into what had once been a sitting room, fireplace and all. Their eyes are immediately drawn to a desiccated, mummified body by the windowsill. They tell by the size that it was either a child or a very small adult, wearing clothes that went out of season more than two decades ago. The small hand held to the windowsill and the body simply hung from that one point of contact, just below the line of visibility from the outside. The body had clearly been dead for a long time, and the two made careful note of it before continuing on.

When the chief had been called about the bloody figure coming from the old Gulliver place she had decided that the pair of officers would be the only ones to clear the scene to avoid drawing even more attention to the place after the rumors of the last few decades. As it was these two officers would likely be the only ones who even would enter the house, as they were the only ones not to have grown up in this small city. They had strict orders to clear the scene as efficiently as possible but not touch a thing until everything had been checked out except in the case of a live victim.

They moved more fully into the room, taking in the broken remnants of old furniture and the fresh looking cracks overlapping older damage to the walls. The trail of blood passed by the crumbling fireplace, complete with scotch marks that extended nearly a foot past the stone, to the back of the room where another door sat closed and imposing. Moving past the fireplace Richard pointed out a pile of scorched bones just within the black markings on the floor. Again they followed order taking careful note then moving on.

At the doorway to what once was a kitchen Jacob noted the scratches imbedded in the door frame half way up, Richard was the one who noticed the single fingernail nail stuck fast into the scratches. Time had cleaned it clear of blood though fragments of flesh clung to the nail implying that it had been pull out at the cuticle. Through the kitchen door revealed a room empty of any corpse but the sheer amount of dried blood staining nearly every flat surface indicated what had likely happened in this room. Moving toward the pantry the officers were disgusted to see the sink filled to the brim of fresh blood.


End file.
